Faculty Profile

Victor L. Schuster, M.D.

Professional Interests

Dr. Schuster received his M.D. at Washington University, St. Louis in 1977. He was an intern, resident, and chief resident in Internal Medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle (Robert G. Petersdorf and Philip Fialkow, chairs) and a renal fellow at Southwestern Medical School, Dallas (Harry Jacobson, lab director; Donald W. Seldin, chair).

His first faculty position was at the University of Iowa, Iowa City (Francois Abboud, chair). In 1988, he moved to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx (James Scheuer, chair) where is currently Professor of Medicine and of Physiology & Biophysics.

Dr. Schuster became chief of the Einstein Renal Division in 1993 and chief of the Unified Renal Division (Einstein + Montefiore hospital) in 1998. He was vice-chairman for research in the Department of Medicine from 2000-2002. From 2002-2014, he was Baumritter Professor and University Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center. Since 2014 he has been Senior Vice-Dean at Einstein.

Scientifically, Dr. Schuster has focused for more than 35 years on the interactions between vasoactive hormones and epithelial transport. His laboratory was the first to show that angiotensin II directly modulates fluid reabsorption by the proximal tubule. For a decade, he worked in acid-base physiology, characterizing the respective transporters of renal collecting duct a and b intercalated cells.

In 1995, his laboratory discovered the prostaglandin (PG) transporter "PGT", a finding he has extended to human and mouse genetics, zebrafish, and drug discovery. His laboratory has advanced the hypothesis that PG signaling is akin to neuronal signaling, i.e. the signaling molecule is released and then taken up again by the same cell. Because PGT regulates the expression of, and signaling via, PG receptors, it comprises a new therapeutic target for modulating prostanoid signaling. Indeed, a major focus of the lab has been to identify and create small-molecule PGT inhibitors as medicinal approaches to therapeutically raising the levels of endogenous prostaglandins. He was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (1992) and the Association of American Physicians (1998).

Dr. Schuster is active in clinical medicine and teaching. He serves as the attending physician both on the Renal Consult Service and the inpatient Internal Medicine service; is a frequent discussant of clinical cases with the house staff ("chief of service rounds"); and regularly lectures on renal physiology, pathophysiology, disease, and translational research careers to the Einstein medical students, MD-PhD students, renal fellows, and CRTP students.

Contact

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